Right in the centre of the picture – an opening in earth, a vast doorway to a cave. What’s inside? Pirates, treasures, an old castle, ghosts, a secret military base or supervillain lair, the nest of some monster, a portal to another dimension, a hideout… anything and everything is possible just from the one visual. Everywhere I look, I see stories wanting to be told. I know I can’t tell them all – and to tell good ones take time, patience and a lot of hard work. This means it takes much longer than I’d like it to take – and I may not even get to all the stories on my list, let alone all the stories I’d like to tell, to say nothing of all the stories out there. When I was a child I looked at the world the same way… a single visual would set me on my way for a trip in imagination that would take all of a warm afternoon. It happens now too… but there is also the left side of the brain, there to temper, and adjust, and limit, and contain. You need both to write a good story – creativity by itself isn’t a product. Back when all I had to do was dream about stories, I could go down every cave unrestrained. Now – I do have to think about what would actually happen if I do go down there. It makes fewer stories… but they go deeper. Boy oh boy – and the things waiting at the bottom…